Studs Lonigan (123 page)

“Carroll looks like he's up in the bucks, all right. But then his brother married the niece of Judge Joe O'Reilly, and Carroll and Judge O'Reilly's nephew, Tommy O'Reilly, get all the business Joe O'Reilly used to have before he was elected. They ought to be getting along.”

“Yes,” Catherine said moodily.

“What's the matter, Kid?”

“Your sister, I'm afraid she thinks I'm responsible for your health. And then we have to meet them now when naturally you'd look pale.”

“No, she doesn't. She knows me from old.”

“Well, I think she does. And maybe that's how your whole family thinks.”

“It's not. And anyway, you're marrying me, not my family.”

“You don't understand,” she said in a choked voice.

“Come on, Kid, snap out of it,” he said gently, taking her arm. “We won't have to worry. The breaks are going to start coming our way now. You watch. A girl like you couldn't bring me anything but good luck.”

“Bill, darling, I love you so.”

Studs, because of his heart attack, had the feeling of being divorced from life and from the things that other people did. He was unsure of himself, and in his weakness asked himself would he be alive tomorrow, next week? He looked at people on the sidewalk, thinking that he didn't know how long he would still be a part of all this. He saw himself as if Studs Lonigan was already limping with one foot over the grave. But no, he knew that he wouldn't die. He knew that. He knew that he would pull through everything. Still, he could not shake away the feeling that he was cut off from life as if he was only half alive himself. He could not get it out of his head that soon he might die, and then all these strangers on Seventy-first Street would still be able to go out walking on sunny Sunday afternoons. He stopped, concerned about how he really felt. There was just a little weakness. These thoughts were only like a bad dream. He took Catherine's arm firmly, as if he were masterful and confident in himself.

“I'm all right now.”

“Honest?”

“Uh huh!”

“We were having such a nice time at the beach, and I was so happy. And I still am. I know you're going to take care of yourself, and I believe in you.”

A gray Stutz whirled toward them.

“Say, there's a beaut of a car. Some day maybe we'll be able to get one like it,” he said.

She smiled consolingly at him.

WHERE would he go to look for a job? And what would he say? And on such a lousy day.

Studs glanced out the window of the moving Illinois Central suburban train and saw the rain beating down on Seventy-first Street. He turned over the pages of the newspaper, and his eyes hit on the column of advice to the lovelorn. Should the girl, who signed herself Terribly Puzzled, go out with a young man to whom she had never been properly introduced? Jesus, she had a tough problem on her mind, he thought ironically. If the gal asked him, he'd just tell her to find out how much dough the lad had.

In just two weeks now, he would be married. And who ever would have thought that Studs Lonigan would be up the creek the way he was when he was getting married? He had to get a job, too, because even if the old man could let him work every day, there were the doctor's orders. With his heart, he couldn't be climbing ladders, and he had to get different work. And where would he get it? All the dough he had was four hundred and sixty dollars out of the two thousand he'd sunken. The brain of Solomon Imbray had guaranteed the stock. Wait till he saw that rat, Ike Dugan. Wait! Lucky he'd been able to get six bucks a share, and if he had waited until Tuesday, instead of selling on Monday, he'd only have gotten five a share. But now where was he going to get a job?

With determination he looked to the classified advertisements.

Experienced. That let him out. Might, though, try bulling them. Experienced store workers. Nothing there. Commission salesman. On that he and Catherine could eat air.

Could he find something here?

Nothing doing again.

Engineer. No soap. Engineer Mechanic. No soap again. Fur designer.

That guy must be an A. P. A. Protestant only. He'd like to run a business and fix 'em. Put in ads Catholic only. Dirty A. P. A.'s. Masseur. Nope. Physician. No.

He couldn't do police duty. Had to be tough for that. And he belonged to the painters' union, but that was just to avoid any trouble, and all he did was pay his dues. Sign Painter. Could do that if his heart was good. Window trimmer.

Nothing there for him.

Might be something here. He knew, though, from the way he'd heard guys talk about looking for jobs, that most of the selling jobs advertised in the papers were sucker propositions. But maybe there might be a real steer in one of these. And he could sell without endangering his heart. Still, to sell, you had to have a line and he didn't have one. But what the hell, if other guys could develop a line, why couldn't he? Red Kelly had sold refrigerators for a while. And he had to do something. Anything he could. He would have to support a wife in two weeks, and a baby in seven or eight months.

He marked the ad with a pencil, figuring that even if he got another job, he might try selling a little insurance on the side. Phil Rolfe might take some, and Carroll, Red, lots of his friends. He'd see about it.

He would write a letter on this one when he got home. Might as well try everything. He imagined himself going around to undertaking parlors. Not the most pleasant sort of business.

He couldn't see himself standing outside the South Shore Country Club with a little wagon, selling ice cream cones.

He smiled, thinking of how there were so many goddamn funny jobs in the world.

Employment agencies. He wondered if anything might be gotten that way, or would he just be handing his dough out. Jobs advertised by them for fifteen or twenty dollars a week, and only college graduates need apply. Things must be tough if that's all college graduates could get after four years of education. And trade schools.

That would have been good work for Hink Weber.

He could see himself going to a barber college. Studs Lonigan the barber.

More jobs for women than men. Not too promising. Hell, he didn't even know where to go. Through the train window he saw the lake, gray, sullen, and he thought that, Christ, he did not see why he instead of someone else had to get a break like the one he had gotten. It hadn't happened to Red Kelly, or Stan Simonsky. Stan at least had his health. But suppose his baby should be born crippled like Stan's? It couldn't. He couldn't have one additional jolt of tough luck. The world wasn't made that way. He turned back to the classified advertisements.

That was something it might be well to follow up. As soon as he and Catherine got really settled down, he'd take a course like this one, and see if he couldn't get himself lined up with a job as a traffic manager. He saw himself a business man wearing a classy suit, getting up from a glass-topped desk, turning to a pretty stenographer and saying with an air of authority, Lucy, I'll be back at two-thirty. And then, walking out of an office with WILLIAM LONIGAN painted large on the glass window. The train was crowded. Were all these people going to jobs? Was the dopey fellow beside him going to work or to look for it?

“Gee, kid, that association in our store is all a racket. I know it. They take a quarter out of our pay every week, and we don't ever get anything out of it,” a girl in back of him was saying.

“Well, if you die, they'll bury you.”

He wondered what the girls looked like, but he did not turn around to see. And damn it, he had to line up work right now. Suddenly, almost over night, his whole life had changed, and all this had come on him. So here he was with no future, nothing ahead of him, unless he could go out and get it for himself. The best thing, if it only could be done, would be to get into politics. Red Kelly had, but he'd run in luck, and was in now. How was he going to get in and get lined up? Yes, how? Oh, Christ, wouldn't his luck ever change?

“But, kid, there must be some good in the association. Mr. Goldensteiner says it's for us, and you know how much he thinks of all us girls who work for him.”

“Well, before I believe it's not a racket to get something out of us, you got to show me.”

He slouched in his seat, wondering what would come next, feeling that his life was going to be short, and that he'd thrown it away for nothing. He felt cramped, too, in the seat, damp. And the day was so damn gloomy. He had no spirit. He couldn't put his heart into trying to get a job today. And he had to. Now there was no let-up. All day and always now he would have to keep himself going, and all the boozing and things he had done in his life, they had sure backfired on him. And he had never really been happy. Always in the midst of forgetting or getting over one trouble, he had always walked into another. The image of Catherine seemed to flash into his mind. It was for her now that he had to face things and keep going on. Anyway, she would stick things out.

“But, Hazel, even if Mr. Browne is hard to work for, still, isn't he handsome?”

The girls in back of him sounded like dumb clucks. But hell, in the old days, he never would have pictured Studs Lonigan having to have someone like Catherine, or anyone, stick by him. And he remembered that night when he had a scrap with the old man, and he'd left home with a gat in his pocket to become Lonewolf Lonigan. Swell Lonewolf now, he was, hemmed in on every side. And how was he going to get out?

He saw that the train was pulling into Roosevelt Road. He jumped up and elbowed to the door. He didn't understand why this sudden idea hadn't occurred to him sooner. He could try getting a job in a gas station, and the Nation Oil Company offices were nearby on Michigan. Swell idea, he thought, stepping onto the wet platform.

His indecision grew as he stood sheltered in the entrance to the Nation Oil Building, watching the rain ink the boulevard, seeing people hurry by. Automobiles and motor busses passed, their tires swishing.

Across the street Grant Park was desolate, and over it was the heavy, downward sky.

He wanted to forget everything. If it was only a decent day, he knew he would feel better and maybe be able to look for a job with more confidence. He began to grow nervous, and wondered if the elevator starter was noticing him and would suddenly tell him that loitering in the building was not allowed. Now, what the hell would he say when he got upstairs? Maybe it would be useless to try here.

He compressed his lips, turned, approached the middle-aged uniformed elevator starter whose face was forbidding.

“Where is the employment department for the service stations?” he asked.

“Personnel Department, eighth floor. Take the last elevator,” the starter said coldly, pointing as he spoke.

Entering the elevator he felt ashamed, because the starter knew his purpose. Three young fellows followed him and he wondered were they also looking for a job.

“Late today,” the runty elevator man said as a pretty girl, wearing a blue raincoat, stepped into the car.

“Who wouldn't be in this weather?”

He closed the gates and the elevator shot upward. “It's a bad day out, all right,” the elevator man told the girl.

“Is it! Say, I could hang myself out on the line today, I'm so wet.”

The girl left the car at the third floor. Studs became more and more anxious as one of the other fellows walked out at the fifth floor. The other two followed Studs out at the eighth floor. He walked along the narrow, tiled corridor, hearing the clicking of typewriters from behind glazed glass doors. Finding the door to the Personnel Department, he entered, followed by the other two fellows.